Recruitment is a big word but, basically, it’s the process that companies create to find and select people to work with. Some have very standard processes, others have it in a little different way. I’m here to talk you through it how we do it at Mindera! I like when people ask me if we are hiring. You will know the answer by the end of the text :)

Why?

New clients, new projects, people leaving, etc… are a few of the things that make recruitment a never-ending job. Some open positions, such as frontend or backend, almost never close and, while we are growing, probably never will!

But how does it all work?

Mindera’s recruitment, like everything else, is constantly changing, adapting, and evolving according to our culture. In this post, I’m going to lay down step by step our recruitment stages — or at least how they work at the moment. One important idea to keep in mind is that everyone at Mindera is welcome to participate in the recruitment process and that makes all recruitment processes a unique experience for each candidate. But they all tend to follow the following steps.

Step 1: sourcing

There are different approaches to how we find applicants for Mindera. One of them is that we get directly in touch with potential candidates through different platforms (e.g. Linkedin or GitHub). Consultancy agencies that work with us also send us a lot of candidates. People also often reach out directly to apply.

Step 2: screening

At this stage, we look at candidates’ CVs and their answers to our questions, and we check for experience in similar positions, relevant technologies, and other details that can give us information about a technical fit. When in doubt we have a chat!

Step 3: first call

After a successful screening, we usually ask candidates for a 30min video chat. In this phase, we often ask candidates about themselves, their experience, what technologies they like to work with, or what they have been doing lately. In the BE and FE pipelines, we are now starting to use Codility, which is a testing platform where our candidates can go through some coding challenges. This allows us to check some of their technical skills, critical thinking, and problem-solving abilities. This exercise also gives us a starting point for our technical interview on the next stage.

Step 4: face-to-face technical interview

This is a much more technical interview. But we try to make this stage work as a knowledge-sharing experience while we challenge candidates to think out of the box in finding solutions to our challenges. Even though this stage is focused on technical skills, we strive to not only focus on the candidate’s technical skills but also on their soft skills when collaborating with potential future teammates.

Step 5: cultural interview

Our culture is what makes Mindera, well, Mindera. And, as such, it’s very important for us to make sure that when we hire a new Minder they will contribute to our culture and that our culture fits his or her values. In this step of the process, we try to understand the person’s way of thinking, their values, and motivations. It’s also the chance to share more about how we work at Mindera. We share specific challenges in decision-making, explain how offers work, and our salary cycles. This is also the time when we talk about salary expectations. If you want to know a bit more about how we work, you can read why we don’t have people managing other people.

Step 6: offer

This is the last step in our ‘process’. The unique part about this stage is how we get to decide on a value to offer a candidate. How does it work? Well, after all of those interviews, we will talk to each other and we will do a comparison model. This means that we will compare the candidate with people currently working at Mindera, based on technical skills and their ability to learn and interact with others. After we get to two or three Minders who we agree have similarities with the candidate, we will make an offer based on those Minders’ salaries. We think that this is a fair model, one where we can keep everything levelled for everyone. But if you want to know more about it then you can read a story about salaries at Mindera.

In conclusion

It’s important to say that this is the process we have right now but it will change, adapt and evolve, for sure, since we are always trying to improve things. It also depends a lot on the people who get involved in this process — if people change, it’s natural that the process also changes. As a matter of fact, we are trying Codility at the moment as a new tool to improve the recruitment process. A group of people wanted to try it out and now we are running the tool in some of our pipelines, to see how it works. The challenge is always to improve the candidate’s experience — how do we make this happen with the right quality and in the least amount of time.

When people ask me if we are recruiting, the answer is, we are always recruiting :) If we are not right now, we will be tomorrow!

I would like to thank you for getting through my gigantic wall of text and I hope it was not too long to read.

If you have any questions or would like to know more then just let us know.